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The administration estimated the average household benefit at $460 per year, with a maximum credit of $2,653.

Those are the simple, if harsh, facts of life in what used to be the Golden State. It’s a great place to live if you can afford it, but it’s a daily struggle if you can’t – and too many can’t.

The push back from schools hit with a huge CalSTRS rate increase, expected to be an additional $3.7 billion a year when fully phased in, is not that it’s unaffordable and will hurt students or unfairly lets the state and teachers off the hook. . . As it stands now, school districts would have to pay for the CalSTRS rate increase with money from a new K-12 funding plan adopted two years ago, the Local Control Funding Formula.

Gov. Jerry Brown’s January proposal underestimated the amount available in the coming fiscal year by as much as $3.9 billion and most likely by around $1.3 billion, according to the Legislative Analyst’s Office. The updated numbers will come this week in Brown’s May revision.

“Pension reform also creates an alternative to tax increases,” DeMaio said in an interview. “And right now there are a lot of groups in California that are very concerned about the bevy of tax hikes that will be on the 2016 ballot.”

An expanding state economy and a temporary sales and income tax increase are flooding the state treasury with money, at least $4-plus billion more than the current budget assumes, and maybe even $5-plus billion.

Like the legislation, the initiatives would raise the tobacco tax by $2 per pack of cigarettes to raise $1.5 billion annually for smoking prevention and smoking-related medical costs now borne by taxpayers through Medi-Cal, the state’s healthcare program for the poor.

California income tax collections in April exceeded Brown administration estimates by more than $1.6 billion, according to data posted Friday by the state controller’s office, pushing income tax revenue for the year $8 billion higher than during a comparable period in 2013-14.

The legislation doesn’t pick a spot for the campus, which Gatto envisions being akin to the private California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and specializing in science, technology, engineering, the arts and mathematics. Gatto has said it might be in an area near Silicon Valley, Hollywood or in a part of the state without a nearby UC campus.

BART will need voter help to meet more than $9.6 billion in capital needs through 2024, and it has no contingency plan if voters don’t come through to help, California’s state auditor says in a report released Tuesday afternoon.

The unusual new startup dangles the possibility of getting Draper’s seed funding — as much as $2-4 million — for putting an idea on the state ballot. But he says he’s also willing to provide seed for non-profits and for-profit ventures, or to help fund a campaign to push an idea through the legislature.

Instead of pushing in a reform direction, the CTA’s backers are trying to make it tougher to deal with inadequate teachers. SB 499 and AB 575, co-sponsored by Assembly Speaker Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, “would open teacher evaluations up to collective bargaining on not just the process, but the actual standards by which teachers are evaluated,” argued a coalition of education-reform groups opposing the bills. “Offering unions this power affords them the opportunity and incentive to water down teacher evaluations, including minimizing the percentage of their evaluations based on objective measures of student learning and academic growth.”

The analysis, which compared 2014 city and federal wage data, shows that three of the five largest job categories represented by Service Employees International Union Local 721 — the biggest and most prominent of the unions now in contract talks with the city — pay more than double the median salary of similar full-time, private-sector jobs in Los Angeles County.

California income tax collections in April have already exceeded the Brown administration’s January estimates, underscoring the surge of higher-than-expected money flowing into the state treasury and possibly offering health and welfare programs – not just schools – a piece of the windfall.

“School board members are counting on the state to pay for the plan, hoping California will send the district higher-than-expected revenues when calculations are revised next month. Alternatively, the district would look to cut programs and lay off educators to balance a budget deficit most recently projected at $140 million for the fiscal year that starts July 1.”